Vamos! And finally in a Model T Ford.

In which Sid and Doris take the New Jersey Turnpike to stay with friends and ride in the oldest car they have ever been in.

This is the Friday of Labor Day weekend, which means the whole of the east coast corridor is trying to get to somewhere else for the weekend. Leaving Oxford we can immediately see that a lot of them are headed for the undisputed delights of the Delmarva peninsula, which is a bit unnerving, but the mood is lightened by the spectacle of a DC3 doing bumps at Easton airport.

We have seen some of the swankiest neighbourhoods in Maryland and California as well as farms of all sizes and some full-on hillbilly homes in Tennessee. “S” is in charge of mascoting the traffic as we go through Middletown, so now we’ve seen it all.

It’s also very charming to go over the Chesapeake-Delaware canal, which joins up another loop in our trip as you may remember Nereus used to get back to Oxford from New York.

Anyway, we are now approaching a solid wave of suburbs and cities all the way to Chatham NJ.  The radiator still has not sealed so we look for a route that will not involve sitting boiling up at the interminable American traffic light. No wonder the miles per gallon are so poor when drivers grow into their pensions sitting at Traffic Signals.

This means a visit to the New Jersey Turnpike, and time to mix it with the big boys.  Plenty of object lessons from people who have got it wrong, including driving past a very pretty but sadly now much less valuable copper-coloured BMW i8 who has shared plenty of his elegant paint with the vehicle in front.  Everyone seems to be out and exchanging litigation details so the rest of us drive past at that special speed which allows you to rubberneck while hopefully not having the same accident.

While Sid never says ‘Kathy I’m lost’ we do see from counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they really have all come to look for America. The Turnpike is twelve lanes wide but it is moving, and with the help of Mr Google we manage to get off at the correct junction onto the somewhat mysteriously-named “Garden State Parkway”.

That last bit of traffic is busy but free-flowing and we finally get to the toy store at Troy Hills where we are delighted to meet up with Matt, who found and commissioned the JGG for us. And it has done well, covering 5,000 miles from Eugene to San Francisco and Pacific Grove, over the Rockies, across the Plains and the Appalachians to Nag’s Head on the Atlantic, up to Maryland and now to New Jersey. It always started. Matt may be as pleased as we are.

Matt shows us some of the cars in the store and as many of them seem to be his as his clients’.

We particularly like Linda’s turquoise Bonneville which is in the shop to have its brakes fettled. [Do zoom in to the picture to see the detail of the upholstery, it is so pretty – D.] Sid does not ask Have you considered putting discs on it?

At home in Chatham we catch up with Linda for the first time since Monterey, which feels like more than three weeks ago.

In the morning there is time for more car tomfoolery when Sid and Matt take out the new/1936 Bentley convertible round Florham Park. It drives very well, better than the much younger 1959 JGG. But then the Bentley cost about the same as three terraced houses in London. Happily for Matt the current exchange rate is kinder than that.

And the final treat is to go out in Matt’s Model T Ford.  It starts first time (after some remembering which buttons/knobs/levers to push in which order) and out we chug.  We thought for a run round the industrial estate but no!  We are going on the open road!!

Parents of young children may not want them to watch this video (ha ha it is ok actually apart from a guest appearance by Doris’s finger in the middle).  Anyway it is only taken on a straight bit of road because it was too hard to hold the iPhone in the air when going around corners, and PLOT SPOILER we all got back safely.

Time to leave for JFK (incidentally, going over the East River on the IS 678, which we sailed under on Nereus) and time to reengage with the Covid protocols that haven’t really existed on this road trip.

If you are looking for some more roadtrip reading, our beloved but sadly possibly only reader, clicking on the picture of Tim Moore’s book will take you to a review of his journey across the US in a Model T.  And after doing only a couple of miles in one, we say CHAPEAU.  And no, we are not tempted.

But will we come back for another journey in the JGG?  Yes, probably. Yes, almost certainly.  Alright then, YES.  Unless of course you’d like to buy it off us and do a trip yourself?